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OK, I just got word about this contest I can run for you, my loyal readers. Electro-pop sensation Lights will officially kick off the Pepsi Taste Challenge at the all-new ‘Pepsi Pop-Up space’ at 315 Queen Street West in Toronto. There she’ll delight Pepsi fans by administering the popular Pepsi Taste Challenge and performing an exclusive acoustic set on Wednesday, June 26 beginning at 2:30 pm. The official Twitter hashtag for the Pepsi Pop Up is #PepsiPopUp for those of you who want to follow the action online. The contest I get to run is hooking one person up with two VIP tickets to this launch event!!! Details below!!! You know you want to check this out, I mean just look at that picture of Lights below, she knows how to play a keytar! You know a musician is awesome when they can bust out a keytar! (Although she probably won’t tomorrow, it being an acoustic set.) Read more…

Last night at Revival on College in Toronto I attended one heck of a cool event called the #PepsiThrowback Party. The whole theme of the party was the 1980s because Pepsi recently re-released a product called Pepsi Throwback. The party was hosted by the one and only Casie Stewart http://www.casiestewart.com who I need to give a serious shoutout to for hardcore hooking everyone on the Twitter up to attend this event.

I have mentioned this product before when it was released for a brief 6 week period in February and March. According to literature supplied by Pepsi to its Throwback Party attendees the product was so popular they’ve decided to bring it back again through June and July in Canada.

In case you’re wondering what is up with the 1980s theme it is because the Pepsi Throwback product is made in the same way that Pepsi used to be made up until the 1980s; with more hints of vanilla and caramel and using REAL SUGAR. Yes, that’s right, nowadays they do not use real sugar in Pepsi and most other sodas in Canada & the USA because “high fructose corn syrup” is way cheaper.

When we got into the party we got two drink tickets courtesy of Pepsi which was pretty cool…who doesn’t like free drinks? They also had a very special photobooth with a green screen behind it. I took a picture of some of the attendees having their picture taken in the photobooth and then later I took one of these photobooth pictures with my friend Reggy aka @fragileheart. The result is below after the Pepsi folks did some PhotoShop magic to the picture. When they were done the picture became a Weekend At Bernie’s picture as seen below. Read more…

The other week I got a can of this ‘new’ limited edition type of Pepsi, Pepsi Throwback. This Pepsi is (as stated on the can) ‘made with real sugar’ – as opposed to other sodas these days which are made with glucose/fructose aka high-fructose corn syrup because it is cheaper than real sugar. Soda companies switched sometime in the 1970s or 1980s to the corn syrup to increase profits and encourage use of domestic corn (in the USA) from what I have read online. Aside from using real sugar, Pepsi Throwback has extra vanilla and caramel when compared to modern-day/regular Pepsi. Throwback is being sold in 355 mL cans, 12-pack cases and 591 mL bottles – so sorry, you can’t get it in a 2 Litre bottle.

According to this article from Canadian Grocer herePepsiCo says Throwback will also be sold only the next eight weeks [after January 27th] on Canadian store shelves. The packaging is a replica of the Pepsi can from 1971. So if you want to try it, you got to get on that soon!I just bought a 591 mL bottle of Pepsi Throwback at the 7-Eleven location in Toronto on Bathurst south of Wilson in North York. The can pictured above I got at AdBall Va Va Vintage (which was a 1940s themed event so maybe that is why they chose to use Pepsi Throwback).

Now, what does it taste like? It is pretty good, definitely different. I think it sort of reminds me of the RC Cola I used to drink in Israel when I lived there…which is different from the RC Cola available here in North America. It is also a lot more fizzy and gassy than what we have come to expect from soda these days. In retrospect I probably should have bought a bottle of regular (current) Pepsi to truly taste test against – maybe another blog post I will do that. Also, to me it seems to have a lighter taste than regular Pepsi nowadays does. It doesn’t announce itself to your taste buds in the same way that regular Pepsi does but it makes up for that in the fizziness department. In terms of fizziness though it does not even begin to compare to “Kosher For Passover” Coca-cola which also avoids glucose/fructose aka high-fructose corn syrup as it is against the laws of Passover for a majority of Orthodox Jews to eat any corn products. That cola is so fizzy you literally have to wait 30 seconds for the fizz to go down mid-pour if you’re pouring a large enough cup (more than 8 oz) or if you want to start drinking it and not get fizz on your nose.

Have you tried this new (or is it old?) incarnation of Pepsi? What did you think?

For most of us with smartphones it is very difficult to sometimes put our phones down. As you can see in the above picture from the Pepsi Refresh Project Tweetup by @PhotoJunkie we addicts to social media spend a lot of time on our phones tweeting even when we are out in public with groups of people. Most of us who are used to hanging out with fellow social media addicts do not think anything of it when people violate normal etiquette rules and are looking down at their phones while we are talking to them. We are well aware that (1) we do it too and (2) no offense is meant by it and (3) most of us are quite adept multitaskers who can listen to a conversation while tweeting about it too.

When I’m tweeting I usually only have one hand free. Like in this picture of me with @Got2ridemyhorse from #XLBday88 by @The_JMoney (http://www.justinbaisden.com).

However, one of the problems I often find myself having when I am out and about listening to a speaker or watching a performance and all the while tweeting/BBMing/texting/browsing the Internet is that I only have one hand which remains free for other uses. Often, it is true, this free hand is used for holding a beer as in the picture above but what do you do when the on stage act which you are tweeting about finishes and you are still busy with one hand on your phone? How do you show your appreciation with the rest of the crowd – who aren’t an addict like you and have 2 hands free – who are all clapping? We already know there is no way I’m going to stop tweeting to clap so there must be another way to continue tweeting AND clap at the same time without knocking my phone out my hands. (Hey, I already admitted I’m an addict, don’t judge me!) And so, I have come up with a brilliant solution which I would like to share with you – and please feel free to use it whenever you are out and about. What I do is I ensure I am not holding a beer in my otherwise free hand and I simply slap the side of my leg – below the pocket so as not to crush stuff in there – and it provides a very similar sound to the clapping of two hands together.

In case you are wondering, I have experimented with slapping other parts of my body – no not my crotch, I wasn’t even trying that one – and they don’t work in terms of the awkwardness of hitting them repeatedly, and their very biological makeup. Your chest will not supply quite the same sound because it is largely hollow inside your lungs, also it is quite awkward smacking your chest while you are trying to tweet…that repeatedly moving hand is an annoying distraction! Slapping your opposite upper arm WOULD work except you’d probably run into the problem of dropping your phone and all the shaking will probably prevent you from tweeting. No, the leg/thigh region is the best place for you to slap as an ersatz clap for all of us social media/iPhone/CrackBerry addicts out there.

On Monday, November 22, 2010 at The Pilot in Yorkville @PepsiCanada and the one and only @AmberMac put on quite the event!

The Pepsi Refresh Project’s site is at RefreshEverything.ca. They describe the Project as “Looking for individuals, businesses (which have a maximum of 50 employees and $5 million in annual revenue), and non-profit organizations with ideas that will have a positive impact on communities.” Once they have the top voted ideas they give out grants to make those ideas a reality. The voting for this round of ideas ends December 31st so if you have an idea you still have plenty of time to send it in! This is an amazing project and an amazing thing that Pepsi is doing. If you have any ideas I strongly recommend you to go check it out. Even if you don’t go vote for whichever you think is the best ideas!

Me with @Smack416 aka Mo Bro Lee - who I randomly met at The Pilot. He liked my sign & wanted to get in on my picture.

We each were told to write on a board what we cared about and as you can see above I decided to champion my Movember fight against Prostate Cancer. Lee (@Smack416 on Twitter) saw what I was writing and asked to a part of my picture so I let him but then did another one a bit later (which you can see in the collage below).

For those of you who have been to The Pilot before yo u are probably wondering where the heck that picture was taken…it was done in front of a green screen! Check out the collage below for a picture I took of the green screen-photo area.

All in all it was a great night, I got to meet the one and only Amber MacArthur (@AmberMac) in real life as well as her fellow WebNation personality Maurice Cacho (@MorningMoe). Maurice, I am still waiting for that autograph!!! Jo (@ClickFlickCa) is going to be so jealous!

As well Pepsi got us a very special musical guest, the one and only Keshia Chanté who performed a couple of songs for us acoustically.